Number 79 January, 1918 

BOWDOIN COLLEGE BULLETIN 



Memorial Addresses 

and Other Tributes to 

President 
William DeWitt Hyde 




Brunswick, Maine 
1917 



Entered as second-class matter, June 28, 1907, at Brunswick, Maine under 
Act of Congress of July 16, 1894 



ftooo^rj^i 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 




WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE 



ADDRESSES 

DELIVERED AT PUBLIC SERVICES 
AT BOWDOIN COLLEGE, OCTOBER 
TWENTY-FOURTH, NINETEEN 
HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN— AND 

OTH ER TRI BUTES 

TO THE MEMORY OF PRESIDENT 
WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE 




BOWDOIN COLLEGE, BRUNSWICK, MAINE 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN 



■ 7 



, r\ 3 



THE cot 



CONTENTS 

Address Page 

Rev. Samuel Valentine Cole, D.D., LL. D 5 

Address 

Edward Page Mitchell, Litt. D. 12 

Address 

Rev. Alfred Williams Anthony, D.D., LL. D. 19 

Chapel Address 

Dean Kenneth Charles Morton Sills, LL. D. 28 

From the President of Colby College 

Arthur Jeremiah Roberts, A.M. 33 

From the President of Bates College 

George Colby Chase, D.D., LL.D. 34 

From the President of the University of Maine 

Robert Judson Aley, Ph.D., LL.D. 35 

From the Records of the Academical Faculty of the College 36 

From the Records of the Medical Faculty 37 



ADDRESS 

By Rev. Samuel Valentine Cole, D.D. ; LL.D. ■ 

Bowdoin College has lost a great president and gained a 
great memory. The workman lays down his tools, the teacher's 
voice grows silent, the friend passes from sight; but the work 
continues, the inspiration of personality remains, the friend 
takes on a new and mysterious power. 

It is but half a year ago that the man we remember with so 
profound a sense of loss delivered before his fellow towns- 
people a vigorous address on the great war, and was in the 
full activity of his college work. He afterwards wrote his bac- 
calaureate sermon, though he did not deliver it. All this seems 
very recent — and now the change. He lives and works among 
us to-day as an invisible presence. We shall know him hence- 
forth as a great and dynamic memory. 

My acquaintance with President Hyde covered the entire pe- 
riod of his connection with the college ; my more intimate as- 
sociation, through membership in the Board of Trustees, ex- 
actly the second half of that period. I have seen him at the 
council table, in the class-room, in the pulpit, on the educational 
platform, in the social gathering, at the public dinner, on the 
railway train, on the playground, at the vacation resort, and in 
his own home. I have known him in times of gladness and in 
times of trial; when the world praised him and when blame and 
criticism were his lot. And from no time or place in this 
long and varied experience do I recall any word or deed of his 
unworthy of a true man; but, on the contrary, many a kindly 
or uplifting utterance, and many an act revealing a large and 
generous soul. He was one and the same man everywhere and 
always. The warp and woof of his life were as a garment 
woven without seam and worn without blemish. 

There are many sides to the nature of any man of vision and 
power. The same gift of imagination, according to the cir- 



6 Bowdoin College 

cumstances that control and direct it, will produce the poet, the 
novelist, the preacher, the editor, the general, the financier, or 
the educator. Any one of these may have, therefore, within 
himself something of all the rest. President Hyde was such a 
man, and it is unnecessary to portray every side of his life in 
order to show what his life was like. I will attempt nothing 
more than briefly to refer to him as an administrator, as a 
teacher, and as a man. 

(i) Someone has wittily said that if you put a man in a 
large place one of two things will happen : either he will grow 
or he will swell. President Hyde grew. A man of courage and 
iireless energy he was never content with achievement. He 
followed a receding goal from horizon to horizon and at the 
same time developed all the prime qualities of leadership. 

Every great and successful administrator is an idealist at 
heart. He hitches his wagon to a star. But do not misunder- 
stand me. There are two types of idealists, as President Hyde 
himself has pointed out. There is the abstract idealist of whom 
Plato and Kant in philosophy, Matthew Arnold in poetry, 
Burne-Jones in painting, and William Lloyd Garrison in poli- 
tics are impressive examples. No one of these, however great 
in other directions, could have achieved greatness as a presi- 
dent of Bowdoin College. There is, on the other hand, the con- 
crete or practical idealist represented by Aristotle, Robert 
Browning, Abraham Lincoln, and, over and above all that ever 
lived, by the Son of Man himself. President Hyde was a prac- 
tical idealist. He was neither absorbed in nor detached from 
the things of every-day life. He wandered far in the realms 
of philosophy and poetry and religious thought, but he had also 
an abounding human interest and could transmute vision into 
service. It was a rare union of the qualities of the man of 
vision and the man of action that enabled him to administer the 
affairs of the college and become a true leader of men. 

When as a young and inexperienced minister of twenty-six 
he entered upon his office he found a faculty of a dozen men, a 
student body numbering scarcely a hundred and a score, a few 
buildings dating from a distant past, a depleted treasury, and an 



Memorial Addresses 7 

endowment fund that was pitifully small. When he laid down 
his work the contrast between the college he had found and the 
college he left was as great and as striking as that which the 
Emperor Augustus produced in transforming a Rome of brick 
into a Rome of marble, and President Hyde had become a na- 
tional figure. What he emphasized most, however, in the assets 
of the college, belongs with the things which cannot be weighed 
or measured or counted and entered upon a ledger: the spirit of 
scholarship and work, of good citizenship and public service, 
loyalty to truth and duty, reverence, courage, self-control, and 
every quality that helps make a man. He filled vacancies in 
the faculty with greatest care and then pursued the policy of 
non-interference. He treated students as friends and human 
beings, never forgetting that he had been a student himself. He 
left the material equipment of the college immensely increased 
and the imponderable values mightily intensified. 

In all his administrative work, as in everything else, Presi- 
dent Hyde exhibited a fine discrimination. The essential and 
the non-essential held each its appropriate place with him. They 
were never confused. He never mistook a fly on the window- 
pane for an ox in the field, and a sound judgment forbade him 
to squander "five dollar time on a fifty cent job." This clear- 
ness of perspective, this sense of proportion, helped him to 
maintain the right balance of duties and constituted one of the 
secrets of his power. 

(2) But a life like his could never find adequate expression 
through administrative work alone. If he had been asked what 
designation for himself he preferred, I think he would have 
made the same choice as did the great man who signed his will, 
"Louis Agassiz, Teacher." There is no higher title on this 
earth than that of teacher. The world remembers Marcus 
Aurelius, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, Mark Hopkins, 
and many another man of power not by any official position 
which they held as emperor, professor, or president, but by the 
intellectual and spiritual associations that transfigure their sim- 
ple names. President Hyde will be remembered in the same 
way. He was preeminently the teacher, if teaching consists not 



8 Bowdoin College 

in stuffing the mind but in stirring the mind. All who knew 
him have felt the stimulating influence of his rare spirit. Even 
in ordinary conversation some large truth or some piece of 
practical wisdom would flash forth in a form to find permanent 
lodgement in the mind, as when, in referring to the ever- 
changing conditions which an administrative officer must be 
prepared to meet, whether as general in the field or as president 
in the college, he condensed a whole essay into the four words, 
"Keep your options open." He was a clear thinker and wrote 
lucid, forceful, and oftentimes beautiful English. He had the 
true literary touch and in summarization was a master. From 
his conversations and writings one might easily gather a vol- 
ume of epigrammatic utterances worthy of Epictetus* or Marcus 
Aurelius. As in the case of all great teachers we everywhere 
discern the ethical trend of his thought. 

In the presence of the memory we cherish today I am led to 
ask what after all is the finest thing that can be said of any 
teacher? What over and above everything else should charac- 
terize the work of a college teacher, and did it characterize the 
work of President Hyde? Take down your Plutarch and turn 
to the life of Cato. You will find that that illustrious Roman in 
his youth had a good neighbor and friend by the name of 
Valerius Flaccus, of whom Plutarch wrote, that he possessed 
"the singular power of discerning excellence in the bud and 
also the disposition to foster and advance it." The world, al- 
ways busy with its own affairs, never discerns excellence in the 
bud ; it seldom discerns it in the flower, or even in the fruit 
until after a long time. But here was a man who possessed the 
quick eye and the fostering disposition which drew out the 
latent excellence, the "imprisoned splendor," from his young 
friend and so fulfilled the highest function of the teacher's art. 
Tn order to modernize, or, I might say, to Bowdoinize, this inci- 
dent, you have only to substitute the name of some Bowdoin 
student for that of the youthful Cato, and in place of Valerius 
Flaccus write William DeWitt Hyde. I have more than once 
heard President Hyde speak of Professor George H. Palmer as 
his spiritual father. Tn the same way many a Bowdoin man 



Memorial Addresses 9 

will look back to President Hyde as the source of his awaken- 
ing and the inspiring cause of his success. 

(3) It only remains for me to speak of President Hyde as a 
man. Indeed I have been doing that very thing from the start. 
Behind his every utterance and his every act we behold the 
man with his abounding life, his rapid step, the vigorous tone 
of his voice, his hearty laugh, and his ever-cordial manner; the 
man of insight and humor, of scholarly taste and literary ap- 
preciation, of moral earnestness and spiritual force, who al- 
ways appealed to the best in others and harbored neither per- 
sonal resentment nor vain regret; the man of courage, patience, 
and hope, who looked forward and not back, up and not down, 
and was ever ready to lend a hand. 

There is a portrait of President Hyde which hangs in the 
Walker Art Building. Another portrait with which you are 
also familiar exists in the thoughts and ideas of his published 
books. The former presents little more than his outward linea- 
ments ; the latter shows you that inner life we call the soul, or 
the very man himself. The other day I re-read Hawthorne's 
story of "The Great Stone Face." You will recall the legend 
that when a man should arrive in the valley with features re- 
sembling those on the mountain wall it would mean a blessing 
to all the region. A lad by the name of Ernest began to scan 
the face of every stranger that appeared. Each time he was 
disappointed. He found no face like the great stone face. He 
continued his search from childhood to age. But all in vain. In 
the meanwhile he had lived an increasingly useful life; he be- 
came a preacher of truth, and one day when he was addressing 
an assemblage of the people in the open air at the hour of sun- 
set, as his custom long had been, he stood where they could 
see his profile and that of the face upon the gray cliff at the 
same time. Suddenly a man in the audience, noting the resem- 
blance, threw up his arms and cried, "Ernest is himself the like- 
ness of the great stone face." You have already anticipated 
the use I wish to make of this simple story. The last book 
written by President Hyde — his sunset message to us all — bears 
the title, "The Best Man I Know." In this book, as with vary- 



io Bowdoin College 

ing degrees of distinctness in all his books, he points to an ideal 
of manhood — something revealed above us in the realm of the 
unattained and typefied by the great kindly human face seen 
against the sky in Hawthorne's story. And we cannot miss the 
resemblance now between his own features and that ideal. Un- 
consciously he has portrayed himself. 

I know of no man who has more truly embodied the five great 
philosophies of life, or rather the five things which he has so 
well described as required by those philosophies collectively 
taken for every best life, namely, the Epicurean regard for 
pleasure, the Platonic subordination of lower to higher, the 
Aristotelian sense of proportion, the Stoic self-control under 
law, and, preeminently, the Christian spirit of love. 

And now he has gone. The teacher has bowed his head and 
the class is dismissed. The preacher has finished his "finally" 
and ceased to speak. We shall never see him in this place 
again. I did not dream the end so near, though over a year 
ago he said to me, with a touch of sorrow in his voice — refer- 
ring to the necessary curtailment of his appointments to preach 
or lecture — "I shall have to be judged by what I have done 
rather than by anything more I can do." 

He lived a full life while yet a long way from the threescore 
years and ten, illustrating Cicero's remark that it is not neces- 
sary for an actor to remain through the entire play in order 
to show whether he acts well or ill. President Hyde acted well 
his part. Whatever he did was done with thoroughness, with 
conscience, and with a clear vision of the goal ; results he left 
to a higher power. It is not without significance that his last 
words should have been : "Don't worry — don't worry about any- 
thing." And we shall honor him best, as Tacitus said in ref- 
erence to Agricola, not by tears, but by following his example. 

Laurels to those that win them: therefore bring 
Laurels for him, not tears, although his face 
We see no more forever in this place, 
Nor hear again the voice that used to ring 
With many a noble utterance. Let us cling 



Memorial Addresses 1 1 

To one high purpose still through time and space, 

Remembering with what dignity and grace 
He walked life's ways among us like a king. 
With other work in other worlds afar 

This God-commissioned man dared not delay, 
After his task was ended, where we are. 

Crown then his memory, and rejoice today 
That in his journeying from star to star, 

He, scattering only blessings, passed this way. 



ADDRESS 

By Edward Page Mitchell, Litt.D. 

Not very long after the young pastor of a New Jerse) 
church had been bidden to his life's work on this campus, it 
happened to me to be present at a dinner of college men near 
the field of Mr. Hyde's early ministry. It was not a gathering 
of Bowdoin alumni, but pan-collegiate. I was perhaps the onh 
product of Bowdoin there that evening, and it was due to this 
circumstance, no doubt, that several of those who had known 
President Hyde during his two years in Paterson — intelligent 
men of his own and other professions who had known him in- 
timately enough to ascertain the texture of his intellect, to 
measure the dynamic value of his character, and to estimate 
with some accuracy the potentialties of his heart and his brain 
— came curiously inquiring about the mystery of the young 
man's selection. The wonder they expressed was not that such 
a man should be deemed fit for the place to which he was 
called by Bowdoin ; the wonder in their friendly minds was that 
Bowdoin should have found him. By what marvel of discern- 
ment, or by what extraordinary benefaction of fortunate 
chance, had the searchlight operated by the elective body away 
down near the eastern horizon, seeking a successor to General 
Chamberlain who should combine the traditional qualities of 
sane conservatism with a vigorous and manly personality and 
an unerring appreciation of all that was best and most progres- 
sive in the modern methods — how came it that that searchlight 
fixed its exacting rays upon this particular pulpit in Paterson, 
worthily but not very conspicuously occupied by a youth of 
twenty-six, recently from the theological school, without ex- 
perience as an educator, without established reputation for 
practical ability, without even a single revealing book to the 
credit of his authorship, and, except in a circle of small diam- 
eter, without recognition at that time as a thinker of real 
thoughts and a doer of great things. 



Memorial Addresses 13 

I could not tell them then how it came about that William 
DeWitt Hyde had been chosen for president of Bowdoin Col- 
lege. I could not answer the question now, almost a third of a 
century later. I wish I could. In the enchainment of events 
the little links that sometimes mean the most are nigh invisible. 
The secret of that splendid choice in the year 1885 may be no 
secret to some here to-day, better versed in the chapter of 
origins than is the person now speaking; or, on the other hand, 
it may be buried out of sight beneath the structure of justifica- 
tion and accomplishment which we all behold so plainly. But 
in the case of decisions momentous in consequences few there 
are that do not proceed, if the facts were known, from the 
initiative of a single individual. Whether there is record or 
not of the name of the son or the friend of the Bowdoin of 
old who primarily indicated the exact whereabouts of the man 
formed and destined for the making of the Bowdoin now 
mourning President Hyde while rejoicing in him, let us accord 
an exalted place in the roll of the college's benefactors to the 
discoverer, known or forgotten, who first had the wit to per- 
ceive, the insight to diagnose and the courage to propose that 
somewhat daring experiment. 

In the intervening years it has been my privilege to be with 
and to talk with Dr. Hyde not many times. I cannot hope to 
add an iota, even by indirection, to that high appreciation of 
what he was and did, that perfect cognizance which comes from 
daily intercourse in the fulness of love and entire understand- 
ing, and which fills this room today with sorrow and with glad- 
ness. I am conscious that I must speak inadequately, unles* 
there be things worth saying in that which can be said from 
the viewpoint of the middle distance. 

Yet even from the middle distance, even, I believe, from 
much further back, there never was a sense of remotness, of 
indistinctness of outline or of low visibility. Can I describe, 
in a crude way, one of the chief accidents of his character by 
saying that the picture, mental and moral as well as physical, 
evoked by the words "Hyde of Bowdoin" has always seemed 
near to the eye, and seems so now? There are personalities so 



14 Bowdoin College 

vivid, there is vitality so intense, so magnetically alert, that, as 
Motley said of Henry of Navarre, at the very mention of the 
name the figure seems to leap from the mists of the past, in- 
stinct with ruddy, vigorous life. There are natures that per- 
sistently refuse to be conditioned either in time or in space; 
and whether at Cambridge or at New Haven, at Princeton, or 
Wellesley, or Poughkeepsie, or on Morningside Heights, or 
Chicago, or even Berkeley or Palo Alto, one might have ob- 
served long ago and through all the years that significant feel- 
ing of nearness wherever and whenever men concerned with 
the things that so deeply concerned him spoke or asked about 
what Hyde of Bowdoin was doing down by the rising sun. 

It seems so short a time since he turned his face and his 
heart hitherward from Paterson; and yet the interval measures 
more than a quarter, and only less than a third of the whole 
span of this college's honorable and useful existence. It ex- 
ceeds by five years the historic period of Dr. Leonard Woods' 
long presidency — Dr. Leonard Woods, perhaps of all college 
executives the gentlest of spirit as he certainly was the most 
Johnsonian of vocabulary. It exceeds by fifteen years — that is. 
it almost doubles — the term of Dr. William Allen's active serv- 
ice, interrupted as it was by political interference in the stren- 
uous partisanship of the early thirties; Dr. William Allen, the 
chronicler of "Remarkable Shipwrecks" and the writer of 
hymns distinguished by Watts-like fervor and a telegraphic, 
syncopated style which so abhorred the little particles of speech 
that it discarded them whenever possible. It almost exactly 
equals in duration the combined terms of the four other presi- 
dents of Bowdoin : McKeen, the first of the illustrious line, the 
first and last to administer Bowdoin's affairs in the dignity of 
the beribboned queue — amiable theologian, of whose tenets Dr. 
Nehemiah Cleaveland discreetly remarks that he was "not 
quite orthodox in the opinion of some of his parishioners, nor 
so liberal in his theological views as others would have liked" 
— a dilemma not unique in the experience of those who attempt 
to uphold the torch in the presence of the multitude; Jesse Ap- 
pleton, excellent preceptor and rigid disciplinarian, of whom 



Memorial Addresses 15 

with similar tact the same shrewd contemporary witness from 
the Class of 1813 noted that it was "not easy to avoid a feeling 
that the cases of summary punishment bore an undue propor- 
tion to the whole number of students;" Samuel Harris, meta- 
physician and superb preacher, president in my own time, of 
whose unexcelled power in pulpit or classroom to render the ab- 
struse crystal clear by means of felicitous concrete illustrations 
I can testify even from the very depths of the vague, opaque 
and lumpy residuum of what used to be considered an education 
in the philosophies and the moralities ; Joshua Lawrence Cham 
berlain, soldier of the Union, statesman, noble American gen 
tleman; all four of them together achieved a total of service 
only one year longer than the period, crowded with results 
during which he who now rests yonder behind the first line of 
pines labored and builded here for Bowdoin. 

There are fading faces in the portrait gallery of our college. 
The number of the living who can visualize sharply the fea- 
tures of even the later of the series is becoming woefully 
small. As the mind runs back along the procession of worthies 
who preceded Dr. Hvde, it grasps instinctively at any trait, or 
characteristic, or tradition, or incident, however trivial, that 
helps to make human any one of them and to differentiate him 
from the standardized, conventional figure of a college presi- 
dent which in academic history is sooner or later made to do 
duty as an algebraic symbol for them all. 

But this one, the Boy President, affectionately so styled 
when his career here began — and how quickly he came to ma- 
turity ! — what would those earlier presidents and faculties, mod- 
ern themselves in their own time, have thought of the intimate 
blending in this Boy President of the philosopher, the friend, 
and the practical man of affairs? Would they have looked on 
him dubiously as a materialist in education, a worldly force 
rather than the austere prelate and spiritual scourge which 
according to precedent he ought to have been? How, for ex- 
ample, would they have regarded that astonishingly frank 
avowal, in the introduction which President Hyde wrote years 
ago for Mr. Minot's collection of "Tales of Bowdoin," that he 



1 6 Bowdoin College 

had no use for the old theory which "treated students as boys 
under parental discipline;" and that he discerned the stuff of 
goodness latent even in those extremely boisterous and oftimes 
devilish manifestations of perverted enegry which had so 
greatly annoyed and perplexed his predecessors doing police 
duty on the Bowdoin campus for threescore years and more, 
and which had caused so many- of them, doubtless, to grow bald 
while they were yet young? Here was a new conception of the 
preceptorial relation; a new presidential policy and attitude 
towards student life in general and student depravity in par- 
ticular. Here was a Bowdoin president openly proclaiming that 
he and his associates of the faculty, instead of exercising lord- 
ship over the private affairs of the spirited and restive youth 
listed in the catalogue, were to be considered as the conserva- 
tors of the manly freedom of student life; in his own words, 
borrowed from St. Paul, as "the helpers of their joy," and even 
as their co-judges, inviting them to co-jurisdicfion in cases of 
their own sinning. 

The dignity and sincerity with which President Hyde dealt 
with one of the toughest problems of college administration, 
the transformation in student standards of morality and de- 
meanor wrought by his direct personal inspiration, must be rec- 
ognized in even the most desultory survey of that which he 
did for Bowdoin. And so easily and naturally did he bring the 
momentous change about, and so generally are its results now 
accepted as matter of course, like the grass on the campus, or 
the needles in the pines, or the falling waters of the Androscog- 
gin, that the magnitude of the job can scarcely be sensed ex- 
cept from that middle distance which I have already ventured 
to preempt. 

The far-reaching movement that in about a quarter of a cen- 
tury revolutionized the ideas and transformed the ordinances 
of Academia began with President Eliot's experiments before 
young Hyde entered Harvard. Many men of insight and 
power besides President Hyde have ranked in the High Com- 
mand of that educational movement. Few there are, I think, 
still speaking from the middle distance, in any quarter who will 



Memorial Addresses 17 

deny to the Bowdoin president his right to primacy among its 
practical exponents and eloquent spokesmen. For perhaps no 
great teacher that has thought and taught in recent times has 
put the whole philosophy of his thinking, the entire science and 
art of his teaching and the magic of his personal influence into 
a clearer, completer code than is contained in the dozen or 
dozen and half volumes in which the soul and brain of Dr. 
Hyde will continue to endure while printer's ink performs its 
function. His books and published addresses, ending with that 
lofty appeal to patriotism, that scarcely equaled brief statement 
of America's reasons for entering the world war and America's 
duty in the war, pronounced with failing breath not far from 
this place only a few weeks before the voice obeyed the sum- 
mons of silence — these, remarkable writings constitute a mon- 
ument to his greatness on the spiritual side, just as the stones 
and bricks of the college's beautiful new architecture and the 
vastly strengthened foundations of its material establishment 
perpetuate the memory of the prodigious, sagacious, and prac- 
tical energy of his work for Bowdoin. I think it impossible for 
the most detached or even the least sympathetic critic to in- 
spect the considerable product of his literary activity during 
his life in Brunswick without a growing admiration of his 
mastery of English prose. The style is limpid, flexible, ele- 
gant in its unaffected naturalness, tolerant of unexpected and 
often humorous homeliness, striking the right word and flash- 
ing the unimprovable phrase as unerringly as the mind guiding 
the pen shaped the main thought into clarity and steered it on a 
straight course through subtle distinctions and difficult analysis. 
A fit vehicle was Dr. Hyde's English style for the probity of 
thought, the passionate love of truth, the passionate scorn of 
all kinds of baseness, all sorts of mean spiritedness, the honest 
courage of utterance, the precision and profound simplicity of 
the intellectual processes that throughout his life made their way 
to other minds in ceaseless output by means of that truly lovely 
instrument of expression. In the larger aspect, this gift of 
good writing was perhaps a minor attendant of his genius ; but 
it would be easier to underestimate than to exaggerate the im- 



1 8 Bowdoin College 

portance of the factor in his influence as an educator, a moral- 
ist, and a maker of Americans. 

For the student, he erected above the psychology of the 
mere intellect the higher psychology of the heart and of con- 
duct. Ethics with him meant always practical ethics, idealism 
meant always practical idealism, theology generally meant so- 
cial theology, the everlasting quest of mind meant the quest 
of the best. And if we were to scour all his books for a single 
utterance typical of what he was and did, I think we might 
find it in these fifteen words conveying in pregnant formula his 
philosophy of right thinking and right living: "Acceptance of 
anything other than the Best, after the Best is once known, is 
sin." 

He has come and gone. He came neither too early nor too 
late. He came at the right moment for Bowdoin, for the ef- 
fective bestowal of that intellect ardent yet ordered, that heart 
full of blood, and that boundless personal enthusiasm for the 
right he brought hither from the Paterson pulpit thirty-two 
years ago. He brought into college administration and into the 
college atmosphere the best of the Twentieth Century spirit; 
and this full fifteen years before the Ninteenth ended. Though 
we many think merited things of such a man and of the stu- 
pendous total of his doing, when we try to phrase our senti- 
ments in vocables or in print they seem to congeal. . He left an 
institution greatly modified in many important respects, an es- 
tablishment vastly benefited by his presence and work; but, 
after all, in all essentials the same Bowdoin, to remain the 
same 

When years have clothed the lines in moss 
That tell our names and day — 

the same dear old school of the humanities and of individual 
effort, the same mother, serene and sempiternal. 



ADDRESS 

By Rev. Alfred Williams Anthony, D.D., LL.D. 

When a man passes beyond a certain mark in our esteem and 
admiration, we cease to analyze his qualities and we no longer 
think of him in terms of judgment, or of criticism. Scarcely a 
man would think of forming a critical judgment of his mother. 

William DeWitt Hyde with us in Maine had passed out of 
the domain of criticism. Few people in the state needed to be 
told who he was, what he could accomplish, or what his qualities 
were. He was simply "President Hyde," and that designation 
expressed a mature and deliberate judgment, based upon thirty- 
two years of acquaintance and testing, — practically a genera- 
tion of activity and fellowship. That designation carried con- 
fidence and esteem. It was not open to most of us to review 
"President Hyde !" Whatever he approved, was known to be 
genuine and good; whatever he said, was spoken for the pub- 
lic welfare, and was at once recognized as worthy of attention 
and heed. Of a very small number of the ablest and leading 
men in the state, — not to exceed a half-dozen in number, — Pres- 
ident Hyde would be mentioned in any list, prepared by almost 
any person, whether educator, minister, statesman, business 
man or politician, as one, — perhaps the leading one. 

He was outstanding as an educator, as a clergyman, and as 
an author. While preeminently an educator during his resi- 
dence in the state, he never ceased to be a minister of the gos- 
pel, an exponent and preacher of righteousness, and a wise ad- 
ministrator in ecclesiastical affairs. Although an educator and 
clergyman in the foremost rank, yet doubtless his fame is most 
widely spread and best secured, even in the state, because of the 
books he published and the pamphlets and articles for maga- 
zines and papers which issued from his pen. 

Of what sort of stuff was this man, our friend, "President 
Hyde," composed? Can we pick apart and point out a bit those 



20 Bowdoin College 

excellencies which made him known and endeared him to us in 
Maine? If we essay the task we must affirm at once that his 
chief and liveliest interest was in real life. His dominating pas- 
sion was to see things as they are, and yet not things alone, 
but things as related to human beings. He taught philosophy, 
he thought to no small degree in philosophic terms, he expound- 
ed systems of philosophy, his books, engaged with philosophic 
themes, bore titles of a philosophical or theological cast, — such 
as "Practical Ethics," "Practical Idealism," "Outlines of Social 
Theology," "Sin and its Forgiveness," "God's Education of 
Man," and "Jesus' Way," — yet he wandered off into no ab- 
struse or abstract speculations, he lost himself in no mists or 
mazes of recondite conceptions and phrases, he soared aloof 
over no man's head. He was interested in man. If he thought 
about man it was not simply to consider man as an object of 
contemplation; he thought about man always with keen inter- 
est in man himself, and in man's betterment. Listen again to 
the titles of some of his books, "Practical Ethics," "Practical 
Idealism," "Outlines of Social Theology," "Sin and its Forgive- 
ness," "God's Education of Man," "Jesus' Way" He always 
had an emphasis upon human life and human welfare, and all 
the vital interests which make society, and make it better. 
Nothing human seemed to him foreign. Can any one of us 
name in this, or in any other State a man whose enthusiasm 
and devotion to character-building and to social improvement 
were greater than his? 

Perhaps the controlling, dominating characteristic of our 
friend was intellectual honesty. Directness, it might be called, 
in thought and speech and action. He always struck for the 
center of things with few words and with little delay. His mind 
worked in straight courses. It was a pleasure to see him ana- 
lyze a situation. He seemed to discriminate almost intuitively 
between the factitious and superficial on the one hand, and the 
essential and fundamental on the other. I have not seen him 
with a group of students, as I have in an ecclesiastical gathering, 
penetrate the hollow phrases of impotent excuses, sweep away 
the indirectness of inconsequential trivialities, and go straight 



Memorial Addresses . 2 1 

through a mass of circumlocutions which were intended to 
conceal conditions, or disguise responsibility, or divert atten- 
tion from a tender or a hazardous approach to the facts, but I 
venture to believe that his hold upon the student body, as upon 
men in the state, was due in no small degree, perhaps pre- 
eminently, to his ability to see straight and think straight, and 
get at the heart of men and things. 

When he presided in any kind of a gathering, although never 
lacking in courtesy and that delicate finesse which marks the 
perfect gentleman so born and not studiously created, he car- 
ried business directly along upon its appointed way with his 
eye single and with his thoughts concerned for the things in 
hand. And yet he was not oblivious to other and distracting 
considerations. His directness was not that of narrowness. It 
was rather the directness of clearness, both of intellect and will. 
Seeing the thing which required attention, he attended to it. 
He saw other things ; he could pause for by-play and side issues, 
to see, to enjoy, to understand, but he did not stay with them, 
he was not confused by them, he was not lost in the midst of 
them, he went straight onward. Few men, when presiding over 
a deliberative body, could guide the assembly more directly, 
more safely and sanely, to wise decisions in matters of great 
moment than could he. 

If one takes up at random any book or article he ever wrote 
one will find it an almost perfect example of lucidity and clear- 
ness. His faculty of explanation was marked. Out of a rich 
and varied vocabulary he seemed capable almost instantly of 
selecting the word which expressed precisely the thought in- 
tended in the place where it was put. As a phrase-maker few 
were his equal, because of this ability to see clearly with an 
even poise of judgment the shades of meaning, and the an- 
tithesis of thought expressed in words nearly alike but slight- 
ly differing. He has rendered the service several times of gath- 
ering up and putting into phrases, either as a declaration of 
belief, or as a statement of principles, or as a prayer, the senti- 
ments and the conviction of people at times of crises and 
great experiences. The Editor of The Congregationalist par- 



22 , Bowdoin College 

ticularly, as well as other editors, have turned to him for this 
service. 

President Hyde will rank to-day, when rightly appraised, I 
think, as one of Maine's greatest teachers. I do not mean now 
teacher in the pedagogical sense, — that was his profession, — 
but as an exponent and expounder of new and unfamiliar 
thought to mankind. His teaching, both formal, in public ad- 
dress and private conversation, — and I venture to believe in the 
college classroom, — as well as through his books, was con- 
structive, progressive and comprehensive. His was a new mes- 
sage, for he was a new theologian, and yet he did not ruthlessly 
destroy, for he imparted to men a fuller measure of truth in 
truer proportion and in better relations, and so helped them 
construct a new faith. He was a new educationalist, for he did 
not follow the beaten path, nor repeat time-worn formulas, nor 
continue antiquated and inefficient methods; and yet he aban- 
doned nothing essential and real for educational experiment 
and novelty. He was far from being a theorist or faddist; he 
constructively wrought into his educational policy and praxis 
new plans and new expedients, fitted to a new day, but not as 
experiments to be tested and abolished. Already before the ac- 
tual introduction he seems to have tested the new methods and 
the new policies in his clear-seeing mind. 

He was a new sociologist for his interest was in human so- 
ciety. The new society which he saw coming, which he sought 
to explain to men and helped them to realize, was the King- 
dom of Christ. He thought and taught in terms of humanity. 
Although individuals are related in his teaching directly to God, 
and there is a salvation secured by a single soul alone, yet the 
salvation of society as an organism, varied, complex, far- 
reaching, was in his thought and constituted a part of his mes- 
sage to men. Daily life needed reconstruction; he saw it, he 
proclaimed it; and daily life, which should have a new motive 
and a new goal, hallowed and holy in the spirit of human fel- 
lowship and Divine leadership, must be reformed and rightly 
lived in the home, in to^, in trade, in industry, in recreation, in 
amusements, in art, in social relations, in politics, in govern- 



Memorial Addresses 23 

merit, indeed in every manner of contact between individuals 
and classes and races. He thought and planned in terms of 
social conduct and human welfare. 

He was a new thinker. He abhorred cant, he uncovered 
sham and pretence, he unmasked hypocrisy ; yet he was never 
what could be called, "a reformer." He used no extreme meas- 
ures, either of speech cr action. His thinking was real thought, 
not emotion projected at men under the guise of thoughtful- 
ness ; feeling did not run away with him ; he felt, but he was not 
emotional; it was not his characteristic to be torn by passion, 
and then to rant and rave at error or wrong. When error or 
wrong was discovered by him it was his custom, dispassion- 
ately, to investigate the causes, and to undertake a remedy at 
the seat of the disorder, first in the minds of men by thinking 
through and setting forth the new conceptions, the new ideals 
and the new purposes which men should entertain. The prac- 
tical bearing of his thinking was always uppermost in his mind. 
If ethics is "the science of right conduct and character," then 
our friend should be termed preeminently an ethicist, rather 
than a theologian or a sociologist. In thought he never wan- 
dered off far from man, or the consideration of what was good 
for man. 

The interests of President Hyde were exceedingly broad. No 
one ever regarded him, — at least in this state, — as simply a Con- 
gregationalist ; nor was he President of Bowdoin College alone; 
nor did men look upon him as an educator only. If there was a 
vacancy in the United States Senate it seemed the most appro- 
priate thing to men of all parties, without once inquiring into 
his own party affiliation, if indeed he had definite party connec- 
tions, that his name should be mentioned for the vacancy, and, 
if he would consent to serve, that he should be appointed to the 
position. Any occasion, whether educational or ecclesiastical, 
under the auspices of any denomination or of no denomination, 
was graced by his presence and aided by his counsel ; and, until 
very recent years, when an over-taxed mind and body showed 
unmistakable signs of weariness and exhaustion, he responded, 
with signal self-forgetfulness and unstinted generosity of time 



24 Bowdoin College 

and strength, to invitations in every direction and upon almost 
every kind of an occasion, provided only it was for the com- 
mon good. 

His avid mind caught eagerly at suggestions from any source 
which promised, under direction and development, to bring im- 
provement in methods and plans. When in the spring of 1890 
President Hyde at the State Congregational Conference heard 
read a letter of greeting from the delegate of the Maine Meth- 
odist Conference, who was unable to bring greetings in per- 
son, he noted the value of a suggestion that the denominations 
of Maine, in the prosecution of their home missionary work, 
ought not, in competition and strife, to struggle with each other 
for place and preferment in the little communties too small to 
support more than one church, if indeed that. But he went 
further than to feel a mere passing emotion, or to give simply 
an intellectual assent to the proposition; he secured from his 
own denominational body the appointment of a Committee on 
Conference; he took the initiative and the responsibility in in- 
viting representatives of other denominations to meet with 
those of his own in a college building in Brunswick; and then 
with rare tact and judgment, having thought out the purposes 
and processes of an interdenominational organization, he with 
his associates set in motion the machinery which in 189 1 
brought together at Waterville accredited representatives of 
the five leading denominations in Maine, — Congregational, 
Christian, Baptist, Free Baptist, and Methodist; and then was 
created the Interdenominational Commission of Maine, the first 
federation, or inter-church organization, within a state, to be 
formed in the United States, if not in the world. He more than , 
any other was the evangel and the apostle of this new move- 
ment. In one of the great monthlies of the time he published 
an article which showed the need and the wisdom of such com- 
bination and federation of forces, — an article entitled "The Im- 
pending Paganism of New England." On platform and in the 
press he gave voice to the ideals, indistinct in the minds of 
other men, which, when expressed, met with general approval. 
From the first day to this he has been the first and the only 



Memorial Addresses 25 

President of the Interdenominational Commission of Maine; 
and his gracious and companionable presence, his irenic and 
sagacious temperament, his clear thinking and right phrasing, 
have contributed more to the Kingdom of Christ in this state, 
through the quiet, and comparatively unknown work and in- 
fluence of this commission, than I can tell you, or we to-day can 
realize. From his position as President of the Interdenomina- 
tional Commission of Maine has been exerted a steady pres- 
sure of influence which has tended to keep men from their lit- 
tlenesses, from their petty bigotries, from their party and sec- 
tarian rivalries, and from the waste of resources of men and 
means which have been consecrated to high purposes. He has 
been the very heart, the very genius of the movement, and out 
from this state, moving along lines parallel to, and joining with, 
impulses of other men in other states, have gone the ideals 
which have helped prepare the way for the great centralizing 
tendencies so manifest and so dominant in our country, already 
expressed in a Federation of Churches and Christian Workers, 
in an Inter-Church Conference, in a Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America, indeed, in a World Conference 
on Faith and Order. These movements, although not consecu- 
tive, nor related in historic sequence, are nevertheless expres- 
sions of spiritual influences which found expression in definite 
and positive form first here in Maine, and were made workable 
for the first time under that genius of our friend for putting- 
things into practical operation. If it were possible to evaluate 
correctly spiritual forces and the far-reach of influence I would 
like to tell you how far the impulses toward Christian coopera- 
tion and unity have been sent by William DeWitt Hyde through 
what he has said and done in and by the Interdenominational 
Commission of Maine. The platform of principles upon which 
this organization started out has been repeated in New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont, New York, Michigan, Utah, indeed across the 
continent; and this statement of principles has become a clas- 
sic in the domain of ecclesiastical state federations. 

President Hyde gave the movement for Rural Betterment his 
enthusiastic endorsement and support. He would bring into 



26 Bowdoin College 

vital and sympathetic cooperation the great socializing and hu- 
manizing agencies of the church, the school, and the grange; he 
would have men of religion exponents of the best in every line 
of legitimate human interest; he would have the church and the 
school cooperating with the grange for better farming, better 
industry, cooperative trading, improved highways, indeed for 
everything which could promote community prosperity and hap- 
piness. A conference upon these subjects, held under his chair- 
manship in 1910, catching his catholicity of spirit and devotion, 
set before the state its comprehensive ideals, and was not in 
vain although followed up by no permanent organization. 

On his invitation a company of educators, entertained by 
Bowdoin College, met in Brunswick at one time and organized 
The School Masters' Club of Maine, which, had it remained by 
the ideals given it by President Hyde, would have been emi- 
nently worth while as a center of fellowship and inspiration 
for all the leading educators of the state. 

As I look back over the life of President Hyde, known to me 
with some degree of intimacy, and admired beyond my gift of 
words to declare, I am almost content to say of him three sim- 
ple things, and sum his life up in these phrases : — 

First, he was straightforward, intellectually, socially, ethi- 
cally. 

Second, he was interested, above all else, in human welfare. 
This is what the word "practical" meant to him. Was a thing 
practical? Then it must work for social improvement and hu- 
man betterment. 

Third, he was irenic, comprehensive, inclusive, for he was 
preeminently a catholic man. Of him it can well be said as 
though he spoke, 

"My friend, because of doubt, 
Drew a circle and shut me out; 

But I, with larger vision, had the wit to win; 
I drew a larger circle and closed him in." 

I think there is no educational institution in the state, no 
church amongst us, no class or condition of men to whom he 



Memorial Addresses 27 

was at all known, which would not join us, gratefully and rev- 
erendly, in these three terms of appraisement : — 

He was a man of lucidity; 
He was a man of humanity; 
He was a man of catholicity. 

And to say these things of him is to say that he was Presi- 
dent Hyde as we knew him. 



CHAPEL ADDRESS 

September 23, 1917. 
By Dean Kenneth Charles Morton Sills, LL.D. 

Here in the chapel which he loved so well and whence his 
words have so often gone forth to exercise an influence nation- 
wide, by a strange co-incidence on the anniversary of his birth, 
we are gathered this afternoon to pay our tribute of affection 
and of gratitude to the memory of that great leader, who on 
the 29th day of last June, "at the noontide of the day and of 
his life," laid down his earthly burdens. It seems but yester- 
day that he was here with us advising, guiding, controlling, his 
eager spirit steadfast until the end to push forward and to 
achieve. It were futile within these walls to utter words that 
would be formed in the fashion of eulogy. His work, more 
enduring than monuments of bronze, is far too great for any 
praise of ours. All that we can do is to think, each one of us, 
of his influence on our own lives and on the college. At times 
in the history of an institution, as in the history of a nation, a 
great man arises and makes the period under his mastery 
epochal. Such terms President Hyde would be the first to re- 
sent if used about himself; and yet those of us who have studied 
closely the history of the college realize even now that when 
her work shall be finally assessed he will be acclaimed as one 
who helped, more than any other single person in his time, to 
make her great. 

But on such an occasion as this it is not on the wide and na- 
tional scope of the president's life and influence that we would 
dwell; rather, in the quiet intimacy of this chapel service we 
should aim to recall characteristics of the man himself, apart 
from his fame; for fame, after all, is a vain and fleeting at- 
tribute of any man. The things that make the man himself, 
these abide. The quality that separates greatness from medio- 
critv has never been defined. There was in President Hvde that 



Memorial Addresses 29 

intangible, elusive quality, that quiet distinction, that marks the 
unusual ; to analyze it is as unnecessary as to take to pieces a 
perfect flower. But we may see in part whence this greatness 
came; for had it not been based on enduring qualities it would 
pass like snow before the sun. First of all, there was intel- 
lectual insight. A friend of the president said once that he had 
the most active brain with which he had ever come in contact. 
His whole career in school, and college, and seminary, in the 
university and in his long presidency here, was marked by bril- 
liance of mental achievement. Every one of you who has sat 
at his feet in the classroom or listened to his talks here in 
chapel, knows how keen was his power to start other minds 
thinking. I remember his address at the first Sunday chapel 
last year, on Cain and Abel and the social responsibility of 
man to his brother. "There are 400 Abels here, and probably 
25 Cains," was the forceful opening sentence. On another oc- 
casion — "Life is like a relay race; don't be discouraged if your 
side loses, provided you have done your best." Very many of 
us have stored in memory such aphorisms, brilliant, keen, full 
of insight into human need. 

And there was his courage, the moral courage of a man sure 
of himself and of the rectitude of his position. He never 
flinched from taking a stand. Like a wise man he would count 
the cost first, but he did not fear unpopularity. This quality 
always gave a ringing tone to his messages and to his sermons. 
Errors of judgment there might have been; though these were 
few, so keen was his insight into men and into affairs; but un- 
certainty, hesitation, and side-stepping were entirely foreign to 
his actions as to his character. 

Notable, too, was the president's liberalizing power. On men 
hide-bound by tradition, on situations stagnant and befogged 
with precedents, his words of advice would come with all the 
refreshing force of our clear northwest wind after murky days. 
Many a student at Bowdoin has had his thoughts freed and 
started on adventurous journeys from casual words spoken by 
the president or from pregnant sentences from his books. Nor 
did this power stop with individuals. Few of us here and now 



30 Bowdoin College 

can realize how great was the influence he exerted on the lib- 
eration of our College; conserving with wisdom all that was 
best in the old, urging such reforms as would keep Bowdoin 
always in the liberal ranks. "Ye shall know the truth, and the 
truth shall make you free." It was this freedom he preached 
in season and out of season, the freedom that comes from the 
knowledge of the truth and from following the will of God. 
The closing stanza of his hymn, sung at his funeral, leaves this 
thought as if it were his valedictory : 

"Since what we choose is what we are, 
And what we love we yet shall be, 
The goal may ever shine afar; 
The will to win it makes us free." 

I sometimes feel that the president had that burning love of 
freedom that is characteristic of our race at its best; that was 
present with the Vikings faring over the seas; that moved the 
Barons at Runnymede; that stirred in the hearts of the Puri- 
tans here in New England. It is a priceless possession, and 
especially to youth an inspiring legacy. 

And all these qualities blended in the great teacher. For it is, 
after all, as a teacher that his work is most enduring. Execu- 
tive and administrative gifts are not uncommon amongst us 
Americans; we take by nature to business and to direction. 
President Hyde was, to be sure, an unusually wise executive ; he 
selected men carefully, he delegated powers skilfully; he made 
men responsible and then left them alone. But important as 
these qualities are, they pale their ineffectual fires before the 
teacher's power which brings thoughts and ideas, and policies 
and actions home to men's business and to their bosoms. In the 
classroom the president, in his inimitable way, drew from his 
vast stores of learning and experience questions for discussion 
and solution. Few slept in his room; the idlest was often 
stirred to mental energy, the most industrious was challenged 
every hour. From this place so many Sunday afternoons more 
effectually than did any of the famous college preachers from 
outside, he taught us in the things of the spirit; here, again, 



Memorial Addresses 31 

suggesting and challenging, rather than solving and concluding. 

And then through his books he taught a wider audience of 
men and women all over the country who recognized in him a 
true leader, — the prophet of righteousness. 

And now that he is gone, so strong was his personality, so 
firm his hold on faith, so vital his inspiring influence, that even 
in our sorrow and loss we recognize the note of triumph. His 
own words, so often spoken of others, come back to us, re- 
echoing in our hearts, and we know the truth that we learned 
of him that the eternal qualities of personal influence live on 
and on in the lives and thoughts of countless other men. The 
greater love he showed forth in a life of toil and of service. 
He knew the joys of life, and its sorrows, and he looked for- 
ward even to the end, with undiminished hope. "Don't worry, 
don't worry about anything," were his last words. He had 
furthermore the satisfaction of giving himself completely to 
his task and to this college. Nothing could lure him from 
Bowdoin. Offers of distinction, among them a United States 
Senatorship, became mere opportunities for refusal. He stuck 
to his task, man-fashion, to the end. 

And now we say Hail ' and Farewell to that magnanimous 
spirit. In that deep silence which our words cannot reach his 
soul abides, and inspires faith and confidence in ourselves and 
in the future of the college for which he richly lived and in 
whose service he died. 

A few years since, when he had completed twenty-five years 
in the presidency of the college, the following lines were writ- 
ten for him by one of our members : 

Not that you found her brick and made her stone — 

Dear are the bricks from which her beauty rose ; 

Not that her fame through yours more widely grows — 

Sufficient is her fame unto her own; 

Not that from words well said and wisely sown 

Much ripened fruit these many years disclose 

And still from horn-of-plenty much outflows ; 

Her debt to you is not for these alone. 



3 2 Bowdoin College 

But for those deeper things that make the man, 

Courage that seeks not vain and human praise, 

Patience that passes idle carping by, 

And gift of self, that only gift that can 

To greatest height man's greatest talents raise 

And blend them in the realms beyond the sky. 



FROM THE PRESIDENT OF COLBY COLLEGE 

Arthur Jeremiah Roberts, A.M. 

President Hyde was a great and good man who realized in 
his daily life the ethical ideals which he held up before suc- 
cessive generations of students and an ever increasing multi- 
tude of readers. It might truly be said of him as Thackeray 
said of Washington Irving, — Of his works, his life was the best 
part. 

On more than one occasion in recent years I have turned to 
President Hyde for counsel and advice, and the gracious friend- 
liness of his assistance will always remain a cherished memory. 



33 



FROM THE PRESIDENT OF BATES COLLEGE 

George Colby Chase, D.D., LL.D, 

The coming of William DeWitt Hyde to Maine in 1885 was 
epochal, not only to Bowdoin College but to our State. He was 
at once accepted as a leader and in the thirty-two years of his 
official life his leadership was never challenged. His rare 
scholarship, broad vision, independence in thought, uncompro- 
mising convictions, keen sense of social and civic responsibil- 
ity, and absorbing devotion to great moral and spiritual inter- 
ests, won the confidence and esteem of all who knew him, 
whether as educator, speaker, writer, or citizen. His work 
abides in enlarged resources, higher standards of character, 
scholarship, and service, and enhanced reputation for Bowdoin 
College. It abides, also, in the clearer conception of the mean- 
ing and uses of life imparted to thousands who never looked 
into his kindly eyes or felt the charm of his gracious person- 
ality. 



34 



FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MAINE 

Robert Judson Aley, Ph.D., LL.D. 

We appreciate the great worth of President Hyde not only 
to the Bowdoin family of students and scholars, but also to stu- 
dents and scholars everywhere. We all miss him. We all 
honor him. We all have profited by his splendid life of service 
and by his clear teaching of righteousness. 



35 



FROM THE RECORDS OF THE ACADEMICAL FACULTY OF 

THE COLLEGE 

The passing of a president of Bowdoin College in the prime 
of life, yet after a distinguished service of more than thirty 
years, in whose term of office all but two of the present Faculty 
were brought into that body, comes near to being an alteration 
in the very course of nature, an alteration whose full meaning 
can but slowly come to light. To record the sense of loss in 
the death of President Hyde is to bring with renewed force to 
mind that vivid figure — vigorous, alert, genial, clean-spirited, 
full of hope, full of courage; self-effacing before his ideals; 
toward Bowdoin men tireless in concern for their moral insight 
and their individual welfare; their judge, kind but keen; slow 
to condemn, but swift and strong to resist the evil he discerned. 
Yet the more intimate loss to the Faculty is that of a man 
who in a singular degree commanded their loyalty, a loyalty 
remarkable indeed to one who did not know how soundly it was 
based — on the confidence and departmental freedom he ac- 
corded to his teachers ; in the personal interest in their private 
welfare which never allowed the college to stand in the way of 
their advancement to other posts of usefulness and thereby 
won to Bowdoin an allegiance that a narrow policy would have 
lost; on the wisdom with which in administrative matters and 
the choice of teachers, he gave the Faculty consultative pow- 
ers that were in spirit Faculty control, without its constitutional 
machinery. Such a loyalty, thus soundly based, it is meet that 
loyalty record. It is the guarantee that in the continuing Bow- 
doin a spirit like his will inform that vigorous future which 
without his notable labors might long hence have been delayed. 



36 



FROM THE RECORDS OF THE MEDICAL FACULTY 

William DeWitt Hyde began his service as President of the 
Bowdoin Medical School thirty-two years ago. At that time, 
not a single one of the more than sixty men who are now ac- 
tively teaching in the school, had begun his work. Like Pres- 
ident Eliot of Harvard, President Hyde of Bowdoin believed 
that the presidency of a medical school entailed obligations and 
opportunities. Long before the medical schools of this country 
had become targets for benevolent assault by boards and foun- 
dations, President Hyde, in the face of opposition, which was 
vigorous and sincere, determined that the Bowdoin Medical 
School should not remain commercial ; and his determination 
prevailed. But when our school, like every medical school in 
America execept one, encountered criticism which President 
Hyde believed to be unjust, his defense was spirited and prompt. 

For exactly one-third of its life-time, the Bowdoin Medical 
School has been guided by its great leader. Even in the last 
year of his life, President Hyde was formulating plans for 
future increase in the endowment of the school. 

Ours is a share in the legacy which this lifetime of joyous, 
keen-sighted devotion has left to Bowdoin College. In behalf 
of the teachers, the graduates, and the students of the Bowdoin 
Medical School, we place on record this expression of our grat- 
itude for what President Hyde has done and for what he was. 



